


Settling In

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotionally Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Emotionally Hurt Dean Winchester, Guilty Dean Winchester, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, Supportive Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 17:04:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20195704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Dean’s the one who realises Cas’s room is literally just that: a room.There’s nothing in it to mark it as Castiel’s.But it takes Sam to work out why Cas refuses to buy anything when Dean takes him shopping.And then Dean just has to find a way to put things right.





	Settling In

Sam had dozed off, face smushed into a book, when Dean and Cas came back.

They moved quieter when they saw him, but Sam was a hunter and he stirred as they started down the stairs.

“You’re back.” He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and then looked at them. “Did you just buy all the tiny stuff?”

Cas gave him a kind of half shrug and then trudged past, and Sam looked questioningly at his brother.

Dean slumped down in the nearest seat, and stared past his brother, as if making sure their angel was nowhere near before he spoke.

“We looked at a hundred damn things,” he complained. “Nearly wore my shoes out and he didn’t buy anything. Not a single thing, Sam.”

Sam frowned. The store in town maybe wasn’t a Walmart, but it was decent sized, and he’d been as sure as Dean that Cas would find something he liked.

He’d been eager, too, like his brother, to see Cas make the room he’d chosen _his_ room. It was Dean who’d noticed it, first, that when you went in, it really just looked like any other room in the place.

Nothing marked it as Cas’s, and Sam was worried that was because they’d taken so long to realise they hadn’t ever officially given him a room. 

Then they’d put it down to Cas being an angel, and angels having their own space not really being a thing. 

It could still be that, Sam supposed, but he couldn’t imagine Dean doing anything other than taking over the whole shopping trip and steering Cas through every single aisle (his complaints about shoe leather aside) until the angel at least bought something.

Or maybe...that was it. Dean could be too focused, sometimes, and Sam didn’t find it too much of a stretch to think he’d just overwhelmed Cas and left the angel feeling under siege.

“Okay, look,” he said. “Why don’t I take him back tomorrow. Maybe he’ll feel a little less...choosy if it’s just us?”

Dean narrowed his eyes, and Sam knew his brother was reading in between what he was saying.

But Sam remembered the first clothes shopping trip Dean had insisted he take Cas on after they’d gotten together.

He didn’t think this had been a repeat of that, but Dean could sometimes do with lowering the intensity a little when he was trying to take care of somebody he loved.

“Fine. Just…. Make him get _something_, okay?”

Sam nodded. Just him and Cas, filling a basket with things shouldn’t be a problem.

++

It took a little coaxing to get Cas to go with him, but Sam won out in the end, and then he and Cas were pulling up outside the store in Cas’s truck.

Sam kept it light, not treating it like the military mission Dean probably had, and they wandered the store, no real plan in mind, but Sam keeping a careful eye on what Cas stopped to look at.

Which was nothing, really. He looked like he was just browsing, but Sam knew when somebody’s heart just wasn’t in it and that was what he was seeing in Cas just then.

He yawned, a little excessive and saw Cas eyeing him with concern.

“Late night,” he explained, and that at least wasn’t a lie. “Why don’t we get some coffee? They do a honey latte here I know you’re going to love.”

He steered Cas towards the cafe, noticing there wasn’t a single word of an argument, and found them a table tucked into a corner.

When he came back with their coffees, he pushed Cas’s to him, and grinned as the angel’s eyes closed at the flavour, and his tongue poked out to dab at the smear of foam on his bottom lip.

“So. C’mon, Cas. Between yesterday and today, you must have een around this place twice. And you haven’t seen anything?”

Cas looked away, and bingo. He had seen something, but for some reason…

“Cas?”

Cas sighed. “I didn’t find anything...suitable.”

Oh ho. “Definite suitable,” Sam said, but he had a feeling he knew what was coming.

And he wasn’t wrong.

++

This time, it was Dean waiting on them.

He was trying to keep it cool, but Sam wasn’t fooled. This meant a lot to him, because if Cas just had a room that wasn’t _his_ room, then maybe this place was just a bunker to him, and not a home.

And if it wasn’t a home…

Sometimes, Dean’s fear of abandonment just jumped out, but Sam knew this time it was just as much for Cas as for himself.

He rarely participated in PDAs with their angel, but he did this time, greeting Cas with a shy kiss that had Sam smiling and wanting to shake him at the same time.

And then Cas kept going, giving them the privacy Sam had asked for.

Dean stared after him, and then turned an accusing look on his brother.

“Bags in the car?”

Sam motioned for Dean to sit down.

“He didn’t pick anything,” he said. 

Dean might have looked smug if he didn’t look more worried and annoyed.

“Great. Why not?”

Sometimes, like ripping off a bandaid, it was better to just get it over with.

“He’s worried about bringing childish, girly, vomit inducing crap into the bunker.”

Dean opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His skin turned pink, and right then, Sam figured, his internal ass kicking process was starting up.

“Okay,” he said, and rapped the table to get his brother’s attention. “Look, we both know you never meant to put Cas off, Dean. But he’s shopping for his room, not yours, okay? So just...let him pick what he wants to pick.”

Dean got up, sharply, and pushed his chair back. “Right. Like he’ll ever pick _anything_ now.”

Before Sam could stop him, he stormed away, and Sam just had to hope it wasn’t to go and try to apologise to Cas, an apology that would turn into an argument without any doubt, over why Cas had let Dean put him off buying what he wanted.

It wasn’t, and though things were strained for a few days eventually it all seemed to settle down.

++

Cas felt his spirits lighten as he pulled his truck in next to Dean’s car. That hunt had been hard and not as much of a _win_ as he’d have chosen.

The first few victims he knew, logically, he had no chance to save, but it still left him feeling despondent that they suffered and brutally died, and their families would have to find a way to go on without them.

At least, he supposed, no more would die, since he’d dispatched the vampires who’d been preying on that town.

He had no intention of telling either brother that the lead vampire had tried to feed on him; the wound was healing, slowly, and he’d cleaned and dressed it.

By nightfall, it’d be gone, so if he could avoid Dean from being too physical with him before then, he could probably get away with it.

When he went downstairs, Sam was in the library, restocking their shelves.

“Hey.” He broke off, and hugged Cas, and Cas forced a smile as Sam’s hand brushed the dressing beneath his shirt.

The human didn’t seem to notice though. “You good?”

Cas nodded. “Where’s Dean?”

Sam jerked his head towards the hall. “Kitchen. Dinner’ll be ready in an hour; think you can stomach some molecules?”

Cas nodded; eating was still not a requirement, but he’d come to enjoy it nonetheless, and ‘fueling’ his human body, as Dean had described it, had helped his Grace replenish itself faster.

“So there’s time to shower and change if you want.”

Cas did. He had to empty his bag, put his dirty clothes in the laundry, and then probably check the vampire bite on his torso, a desperate last move during the fight, was definitely healing up.

First, though, he’d need towels and something to change into.

++

Dean waited until he heard Cas opening the door to his room, and then crept around the corner and stood in the doorway.

The angel’s fingers were delicately tracing the ceramic bees Dean had nailed up along the walls, a little crowd of them buzzing around the pinwheels he’d arranged in a vase below.

On the opposite wall was the painting Cas had seen, a print of Monet’s Water Lilies.

It still gave Dean a headache, and he didn’t get the pinwheels or the ugly ceramic bees, but it didn’t matter.

Cas got them. Cas wanted them, something in them just touched him, and he was happy.

Dean could tell. He was grinning so wide it looked like his jaw might crack, but more than that…

Dean could feel it. Maybe it was their profound bond, or maybe it was just that now he’d admitted what he felt for the angel, and acted on it, he could read him better than anybody else alive.

He waited until Cas turned to face him, and held out his hand. Dean went in, and took it, and then Cas pulled him in for a kiss.

“You didn’t have to, Dean.”

Dean shrugged. “Kind of did.”

“But I appreciate it nonetheless. More than you know.”

He was wrong on that one, because Dean knew. He definitely knew.


End file.
